“It’s so common now. Who hasn’t seen something like that?”
The speaker: a 17-year-old girl. The topic: pornography. She was quoted in a recent AP story about the rising number of kids being exposed to graphic sexual images online. In the February issue of Pediatrics, researchers at the University of New Hampshire report that 42 percent of Internet users aged 10 to 17 had seen online porn over the course of a year. The London School of Economics estimates that nine out of 10 children who go online will, at some point, be exposed to hardcore porn. (Mom and Dad, if you don’t have a filter, get one now. I recommend the excellent, affordable, easy-to-use filter from www.BSafe.com. It takes only a few minutes and a few keystrokes to download.)
In our 24-hour, Internet-laced, interconnected world, it seems as if it would be easier to list the places you won’t encounter pornography. Years ago, its lowlife customer base had to seek it out, under a brown wrapper or in the seedy section of town. Now, porn peddlers seek you out -- at video stores, on billboard ads that line interstate highways, on television, at the newsstand, in your e-mail inbox.
And, of course, there’s the hotel room. Hard-core sex material is often discovered just by flipping through the channels while looking for the local weather report. Many other hotels make a killing by peddling trashy porn movies that can be discreetly billed to one’s account.
We must not acquiesce in the pornification of our culture. We shouldn’t meekly retreat into the progressively smaller corners we’re so graciously allowed to inhabit. It’s time to fight back.
When it comes to hotel rooms, I have a suggestion: The next time you’re booking a place to stay, check out cleanhotels.com. Simply type in your destination, and CleanHotels provides a list of all the porn-free hotels in the area. Select one of these hotels each time you travel and send a strong message to hotels that care more about making a cheap buck than they do about decency. In other words, let your money do the talking -- it’s one language all merchants understand.
Hotel porn is big business. Remember that that next time you hear the smut peddlers demonizing the “Christian Right” and wrapping themselves in the flag. What they really care about is their precious bottom line. They made about $1.6 billion from their adult pay-per-view and video-on-demand businesses in 2006, according to Kagan Research, a California-based media consulting group. That’s up from $593 million in 1996.
Small wonder that porn producers don’t look too kindly upon Phil Burress, the man behind CleanHotels. Unfortunately for them, they’re dealing with a smart and principled opponent. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Phil for many years, and he’s about the gutsiest, most tender-hearted person I’ve ever met. He works hard to protect kids, and his many initiatives and victories as president of Citizens for Community Values qualify him, in my book, for “Man of the Year.”
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